Affiliation/Advertising Examination

So, today I'm going to look at W-H's affiliates, the Advertising board, and our advertising policies in general. Perhaps a tall order, but I'm still stuck at my grandparents and have nothing better to do. Not like I'd actually do homework or anything...

To start off with, our affiliates. Right now, we don't have very many, since they were cleaned up who knows when. Of those affiliates we do have, the majority are RP forums.

Now, there's nothing wrong with RP forums. I've had an enjoyable time on several of them. But, RP forums usually have either so many affiliates nobody will ever see us (and, let's face it, the button for W-H doesn't really have the same attention-catching properties most affiliate buttons do), or the site doesn't have very many members. RP forums don't usually have a high population increase.

So, basically, it benefits us nothing. So why even bother? I mean, we're linking them at the bottom of every page... and not getting anything out of it. Why not use that space for ads? We're already experimenting with them, although Karl seems to be trying to keep rather quiet about it.

After all, ads would actually be making us some money. More money equals... actually, I have no idea. Does anybody know where all the money the site makes goes to? I certainly don't see it around... Anyway, making us money is still a good thing. Besides, we've tried ads in the past... although we got them removed because Karl cheated and had tons of people click them.

Even if we didn't do ads, we still should be getting something out of that space. We could add a monument to my godhood, for example. Or perhaps we could actually affiliate with other game sites that we might actually get members from. There's a novel idea... We're already affiliated with Vis Servo, yes, but that's really just a start. If we're going to have two rows of affiliate icons down there, we should at least fill them up, y'know?

As for the Advertising board... according to the rules, we aren't allowed to advertise any site not affiliated with W-H. So, the only sites we can advertise are the ones we're linking to at the bottom of every single page. Give me a break. Linking to them on every page is about as much advertisement as we can give to anything. We definitely don't need to have an extra forum post about it. What more will that do?

So, the basic premise of the board, advertising our affiliates, is pointless.

Then we've got the more recent use of the board... advertising other threads on W-H. Art sales, RP forums, random stupid noob posts (hey, I just managed to insult every single player who posted on that board, because you'll never be sure exactly who I was referring to!)... Basically junk, junk, and more junk.

We need to stop that now. For art, we've got the art forum. You bump your threads there to get more sales (assuming you're selling something). We do NOT want people all creating advertising threads as well, which means you would then have to bump your art thread AND your advertising thread. Is it just me, or does that strike you as fucking pointless? Seriously - you do not need a thread to advertise another thread when you could just bump the thread in the first place.

The same goes for just about anything else you could theoretically advertise on the board. And don't even get me started on RP... Your RP may stay in the RP sections. I don't want to see it anywhere else. I already have a hard time not stabbing all those idiots looking for a 'family' on the Off Topic board.

That should demonstrate that the other purpose of the board is pointless. If you could even say it is a purpose, since it obviously wasn't designed for that.

The obvious solution: KILL IT WITH FIRE! That, or adjust our advertising policy.

Speaking of our advertising policy... it's just plain absurd. What, exactly, is the point of not being able to advertise any site aside from our affiliates? Yes, I wouldn't want a rival site to come here and steal all the players, but... W-H is unique here. We don't HAVE any competition.

If Karl doesn't want advertisements for, say, other MMOs, or other wolf-related games, or anything that claims the LWT actually does exist (I still get messages from complete idiots telling me it does), that's fine. But in general, there's no real reason for our current harsh policy.

Yes, I know that the forum being spammed is a possible concern, but it's just one board nobody looks at anyway. Not a huge issue. Besides, what's the harm in allowing, say, RP forums to advertise? It's not like they're going to steal members - they're not another game or anything. Heck, we might end up with more members because of it, due to the advertising rules on most other sites.

Those rules are usually that you can't advertise a site if said site doesn't allow a link-back advertisement or something of the sort, which W-H does not. This means that W-H cannot be legally advertised on the majority of sites, though a lot of our members give the site a bad name and advertise there anyway.

Besides, ever since we've been removed from the toplist (though god knows we deserved it), we have no method of advertising aside from word of mouth and those few players actually posting ads. Honestly, we need the additional locations to advertise...